


you had me go from what I thought was sliding carefully to seriously slipping out of control

by johniaurens



Series: this love will never be convenient [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M, Minor Character Death, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 02:15:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9153085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johniaurens/pseuds/johniaurens
Summary: Alex comes to him from the darkness.





	

**Author's Note:**

> ive been writing this since........july.........and finished this just now...its 3am and i didnt proofread so im rly sorry if i have made Miss Steaks
> 
> read [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7525030) first
> 
> title's from tattooed tears by the front bottoms again

Alex comes to him from the darkness.

Gil smells him before he reaches him. He's young, he's scared, but he's determined. He thinks he knows what he's doing, coming to him in the middle of the night, knows what he's doing when he gets into the empty bar he's sitting in. He doesn't, of course, have any idea of what he's getting into. A younger vampire, a meaner vampire would have killed him by the time he reaches Gil's table.

“Monsieur,” he says, “Alexander Hamilton. Alex. At your service, sir.”

He's polite, and what's better than a polite, pretty boy? But he addressed Gil as monsieur, not sir, which makes warning bells go off in Gil's head. It means he knows who he's talking to, means that he's done research on him. It's worrisome. It means he's serious. Gil allows him a careful smile but doesn't make eye contact. He knows better: he's been around for a long, long time. He's seen things. He's learned not to mess with humans, especially not with the ones who want to be turned.

And that's what this is, isn't it? He's here to be turned. It's clear - he smells of it Smells of desperation and hunger. There's only one thing humans are desperate for when it comes to vampires.

Alex slams down a heavy book. Gil doesn't have to look at it to know that it's about vampires. “Will you please help me?”

Gil eyes him for a long while. He isn't considering, he never had to consider, he knew his answer before Alex even got to him, but he wanted to just look at him for a little bit. Try and see if he's a lost case. Sometimes he can talk people out of it. Alex doesn't look like he can be talked out of this.

“No,” he says, because he doesn't involve himself with humans, and especially not with humans who want his help.

-

But he keeps coming back, keeps appearing in bars, in the stores that Gil frequents, in the subway. One time he even follows Gil home, all traces of nervousness masked with fake brashness, and Gil barely makes it to his door before Alex is there, a strong stench of garlic coming off of him. He's willing to bet there's a silver arrow or some bullshit in his pocket, too. Humans just have no idea how to separate fact from fiction. It's kind of tragic.

“Sir, please. I'll repay you,” is all he says.

“For someone who pretends to know something about vampires you sure have no idea what you're doing,” sighs Gil, and shuts the door. He can hear Alex screaming at him from behind the door for a full hour, but the words are incoherent through the sturdy wood, and Gil turns his music on so loud his ears ring for hours afterward. Alex leaves, finally, but it's a breaking point of sorts. He knows he can't let this go on any longer.

Gil opens his front door the next morning, and there's a note, because of course there is, and he reads it because he's a fucking idiot and he's – suddenly he's very tired. Alex wrote him a long, rambling essay about how he feels like he's running out of time and how only immortality would change it, and Gil has to sit down. “I'm aware of the challenges of giving up my mortality –“ and then some more bullshit that Gil can't help but roll his eyes at. It's terrible. He has to get him to back down before he gets himself seriously hurt.

But first, he finds the closest open coffee shop and gets three triple shot espressos over ice just to treat his nerves a little.

-

The next time he spots Alex in the subway he follows him home to his ratty apartment complex with its beige walls and smelly elevator, armed with numerous long-winded lectures on vampires and just why exactly Alex needs to stop being annoying and leave him alone.

“Don't I have to invite you in?” he asks, nervous, when Gil barges into his apartment, tired and hungry but mostly just annoyed, and Gil glares at him so hard Alex looks away and swallows.

“I think you've made it painfully clear that you want me here,” he deadpans, and Alex shrinks a little. He's not quite as confident up close. He's dressed in sweatpants, a plain white t-shirt, and both articles of clothing are way too big on him to the point where it's not cute anymore.

The plan is to scare Alex a little, maybe share some select details of just how disgusting it is to live as a vampire, so that he'll back off and leave him alone. Gil is busy, and besides, how is he supposed to hunt with a human following him like a lost puppy?

But somehow they end up on Alex's couch, Alex rambling on and on about his visions, his books, his plans and his essays, and then Gil is reading his writing and then Gil is reading his writing and Alex is looking at his socks with tiny holes on them and the stained carpet floor of his disgusting apartment and Gil is reading.

It's not the best thing Gil's read in his life but it is not bad by any means – social commentary bordering on poetry with how flowery it is, long rambling suggestions for how to fix the economy, breathlessly long sentences about how the working class can't breathe under the weight of the rich. Gil understands now what Alex meant when he said that he always felt like he was running out of time. It's right there in his writing, in the loops of his letters, in the ink smudges on the margins, in the paragraph long sentences, the pages littered with commas.

“Why don't you write on your laptop?” asks Gil when he's done, and Alex shrugs, helpless, “I like doing things with my hands. I like making things look mine.”

Gil nods. He gets that – he doesn't really like computers that much either. Doesn't like how everything looks the same, every typeface the same, everything the same double spaced, twelve point Times New Roman even when it isn't, and when you're already struggling to be noticed maybe every little thing you do to lift yourself from the masses of young writers helps.

Gil leaves. Alex stares at him from his kitchen window until he disappears around the corner. Gil pretends he doesn't notice. Alex pretends it never happened.

-

(dreams of a boy with black hair and tan skin – a boy with black eyes,

can't stop thinking about him, can't stop thinking about the blood in his veins or the hunger in his teeth, his blunt human teeth, his -

black eyes and white teeth. in gil's dreams his teeth are always stained red with blood.)

-

Gil gives in a little. He says "fuck it" and he invites Alex over.

Alex arrives four minutes early with flowers and a bottle of wine. Gil has to laugh at that, a little, just because he's so _nervous_ , and Alex looks a little offended but doesn't say anything.

Gil takes him on a tour first, shows him his house, and he can tell that Alex is impressed by the hardwood floors and the high ceilings, can tell that he falls in love with the house as they waltz through it. Some parts of it are a little dusty because Gil can't really use the whole house alone, just by himself, but he knows it's beautiful.

"It's been in my family for almost a hundred years," he tells Alex quietly, and then he realizes that he doesn't have to lie to Alex, so he says "Well, I bought it when I was nineteen."

Alex doesn't comment. He keeps thumbing through the dusty books. He opens one. Orwell, Gil notes. First edition. Not one of his favorites, but an overall alright quality book.

"Nineteen," Alex says, slowly, and puts the book back, "when was this?"

Gil has to pause to think. "Nineteen....thirty....four?"

Alex hums. "So you were born in, what, nineteen fifteen?"

"I suppose. I don't really think about things that happened that long ago. We're not supposed to keep memories from that long ago. It's kind of overwhelming."

Alex doesn't say anything. Gil can hear him thinking. Gil thinks that's probably fair.

He leads Alex back down and they eat and they drink and Alex loosens his tie and then finally takes it off, and Gil looks at his neck, just briefly, and he won't feed because Alex is drunk but he knows Alex wants him to.

Gil takes Alex to the couch. They sit down and Gil shows him some of his favorite books, and Alex talks a lot and Gil listens patiently because most of what he's saying is actually true or at least somewhat true.

"I know you were born a vampire," Alex says. This is not what they were talking about, originally, so Gil is a little taken aback.

"Yeah," he says, because he senses a question.

Alex rubs at his wine glass. His hair is getting frizzy, and his eyes are a little red-rimmed.

"When did you stop aging?"

Gil tenses. "No," he says. He won't talk about this.

"Oh," says Alex, "I just wanted to know how it works - like, clearly you're not an infant. You grew up until a certain age, like, what, twenty, twenty two? You stopped aging at a certain age. Why?"

"Twenty five," says Gil, and his blood turns into ice. He's scared he's going to break his glass with how tight he's holding it.

"Okay," says Alex, "so how?"

"I had to kill someone."

Alex looks only a little surprised. "Oh."

"I think you should leave," says Gil, very even. He's scared he's going to rip Alex apart soon if he doesn't leave now.

"But -"

"Alex. Now."

Alex gets up. Alex sways on his feet a little and shoots Gil a half worried, half offended look. He puts down his wine glass.

Gil comes to hand him his coat and open the door for him. He slams the door closed after him.

-

(the girl with the long braids kisses him and he rips out her throat.

the girl in the white dress closes her eyes and gil's father takes him by the shoulders and says _son you know what to do._

gil's mother brings the girl with the bow maker hands home to him and he loves her.

 _adrienne_ , he calls out, mouth still warm with her blood, _adrienne_ , and then she's dead.

rewind -)

-

Gil runs into Alex again, a few weeks later, and Alex looks like shit. He's wearing wrist braces and he looks like he hasn't slept in days.

"Hey," he says, for whatever reason. Maybe because he's polite. Whatever. He doesn't care about Alex but he kind of does, also.

"Hey," says Alex back, quieter than normal. His skin looks paper-like from close up.

"You look like shit," Gil says, because he does. His under eye bags are getting comically large and worryingly dark.

"I'm dying, Gilbert," he says, and Gil laughs because that's a funny hyperbole.

But Alex doesn't laugh with him.

"Alex," Gil says, softly.

"Yeah," Alex says. He looks up, and for a second Gil's scared he's going to start crying. He doesn't, but he looks so sad that Gil almost starts crying himself.

"They're giving me a few months."

And that's - fuck, that's so unfair, isn't it? Just a few weeks ago he'd told Gil he wanted to do so much more -

he wanted to change the fucking world, didn't he?

Gil doesn't even know him very well, he doesn't, and he shouldn't be doing this anyway, but he gives Alex his address and a time on a piece of paper.

"I know where you live," Alex says.

"I know," says Gil.

Alex takes the paper. Gil starts preparing.

-

And he comes. Of course he does, Gil didn't think he wouldn't, he never did. Alex would never not come. But he comes and Gil is expecting him and right off the bat he kisses him.

"Okay," says Alex, wiping his mouth, "why?"

Gil shrugs. "Just had to get that out of the way."

He's not about to say anything mushy. They don't really know each other. He just needed to, and Alex kissed back. So.

"What am I here for?" he asks when Gil doesn't give him any more or better of an answer, and Gil closes his eyes and swallows.

"You know what you're here for, Alex."

And Alex knows. Gil knows he does. Alex nods mutely, and Gil leads him upstairs, and he makes sure to close the door behind them.

-

(the girl with the braids closes her eyes and never opens them again. the girl with the braids closes her eyes and opens them and they're red. the girl with the braids closes her eyes and her blood slicks gil's teeth and makes his hands sticky)

-

(dark eyes gone vacant; mouth open; gil spits his own blood, dark from his arteries, into his mouth and closes his mouth, makes him swallow, and he convulses and gil prays prays prays)

-

Alex wakes up.

It's a good sign - most of new vampire deaths happen within two hours of turning, and most of those die in their sleep within one hour of turning.

But Alex wakes up and Gil knows they're still not in the clear, not completely, but it's still something and Gil is so, so grateful, and Alex wakes up weary and sore but he wakes up. He says he isn't hungry but Gil has a feeling he just doesn't yet know how to tell when he's hungry and when he just wants his stomach to be full again and he's right. Alex crashes a few hours later and Gil feeds him a few bags of blood. He drinks too fast so Gil has to freeze some of it and make him suck on the blood cubes so he doesn't get sick.

Gil makes him show him his new teeth and Alex scowls at him but he doesn't fight him, and when Gil digs his fingertips into his gums above his canines and his new fangs, still baby-sharp and delicate, come out.

"Look at that," he says, and taps one of them with a fingertip, "you got fangs now, baby."

Alex smiles blissfully through the pain of having his new, fragile baby teeth tapped like that, and Gil kisses his cheek, slow and soft. It's weird, but he doesn't want to kiss him on the mouth yet. It feels too much, somehow. Too familiar.

Alex wakes up. It isn't a guarantee, but it's something.

Gil makes him blood pudding and blood soup and blood bags on their own and watches as Alex eats them and drinks them and pets his face, pets his belly, and Alex makes happy noises and

And Alex keeps waking up.

-

Gil doesn't teach Alex how to do the vampire voice thing that he really wants to learn to use until a month after he was turned.

"Look," says Gil, "only use it for super important things. Everyone can hear it, not just me, so be careful. And only in the house."

Alex nods, solemn, eyes wide. There's still a little dried blood by his mouth and Gil wants to kiss it away but he doesn't. Instead he makes Alex think hard enough to make his voice hoarse and Alex cries and then he swallows his tears and makes the house rumble with a resounding stream of "okay okay okay."

And he looks so surprised that he managed to do it that Gil has to smile. Alex looks at him, eyes wide and wet and then he smiles too and Gil kisses him, just a little, a little on the mouth, a little on the corner of it.

Gil goes into his study to work on his readings. _Gil I am hungry_ comes from everywhere in the house and Gil wants to flip his desk.

Alex doesn't know how to project his emotions and Gil's not going to teach him but he swears he can _feel_ Alex being smug about it from three rooms over.

-

Years go by. Gil wishes he could say it's weeks that go by but it's years. Years go by. They really do when you have no obligations - he's rich enough that he will never have to work again, not even with him being immortal, but it still doesn't stop Alex from working for the both of them. He has this thing about paying back, a thing about owing something to Gil, and he guesses he can understand that, to a certain extent. It’s sweet.

Alex makes him read what he writes and Gil loves all of it. He’s smart, way smarter than Gil was at twenty, and reading his writing is always a joy. He’s thoughtful, his opinions are always nuanced and his style is beautiful - 

He’s beautiful. Gil loves him. He’s confident to admit that, now, when Alex refuses to sleep alone and kisses him every time he sees him. 

“Sweet boy,” whispers Gil into his ear. 

“‘M not sweet,” complains Alex, but he kisses Gil’s jaw anyway.

-

Taking in John was Alex’s idea.

He saw him lying there outside of a bar, barely alive, and Gil had a bad feeling about it but Alex said he would stay there with him until he died and he would never talk to Gil ever again if he let him do that, or Gil would help him take the unconscious boy back to his house. 

And, well. 

They took him and Gil didn’t _want_ him to die, he just doesn’t like getting into other people’s business and you never know who’s a human and who knows what about vampires. Alex patiently nurses the boy back to health and Gil helps him the best he can but it’s understood by the both of them that this is primarily Alex’s project. Gil is mostly here for Alex. 

And the boy wakes up. And they start feeding from him, because Alex comes up with something dumb about John owing something to them, and Gil lets Alex feed from him because Alex is a bad hunter and he needs to learn to regulate his blood intake anyway and what’s better practice than a personal bloodbag. 

See, this is why Gil didn’t want to take him in. He _knows_ he’s a person with his own things and probably a family and shit but god he just loves Alex so much? And it isn’t an excuse and he likes John, too, he’s kind and gentle on the inside and Alex says he tastes good which, most things with a pulse taste good to Alex, but Gil’s had his taste and he knows Alex is right.

So Gil keeps Alex from feeding off of him for too long, and Gil keeps himself from feeding off of him for too much. Gil and Alex pretend they aren’t falling in love with John. They pretend they don’t know the implications of falling in love with a human.

-

John says _I was happy to die_ and Gil remembers Adrienne's eyes when she'd said _I'm happy to die for you_.

Alex notices. Alex always notices, Alex comes and Alex puts himself between him and John and he smells like blood but he smells like Alex, too, and Gil breathes breathes breathes. 

It’s not the same, it’s not, but it’s similar enough, and Alex takes him and wraps himself around him, makes him small enough for him to stretch himself around, and Gil pretends he doesn’t have nightmares, he does, but Alex knows and Alex says “it’s okay, baby. It was a long time ago.”

That doesn’t help, but he knows what Alex means by that. 

Knows that he means _we're not supposed to keep memories from that long ago_.

-

Alex tells him he likes John.

It’s not like Gil didn’t _notice_. He did. He’s actually pretty sure that _like_ is a super massive understatement, has seen Alex make heart eyes at John, has made heart eyes at John himself. 

He says _okay Alex. I trust you. Don’t do anything dumb_ , and of course Alex goes and feeds from him and then he kisses him and John looks like he’s afraid Gil’s going to kill him like a fly so he smiles, hopes he looks reassuring and not scary, and Alex doesn’t even look back at him, just goes in for another kiss and then climbs on top of John. 

Gil likes John too. Gil kisses John, but he isn’t aggressive about it. Gil knows that humans are fragile. Alex doesn’t always get it, he’ll put his nails close to John’s eyes and obviously think about the possible effects of nail in the soft tissue, but Gil doesn’t think, he just touches, gentle and soft and always only with permission. He’s old. He’s been here long enough that waiting a few extra seconds before leaning in for a kiss to make sure that his kisses are really welcome is not even a mild inconvenience. 

And John is _soft_. There’s something violent in him, sure, but isn’t there in everyone? Gil feels guilty about kidnapping him like this, sometimes, with how gentle he is, sweet, sweet boy, he makes Alex and Gil go get his painting supplies from his house and then he paints them, draws them in his sketchbook and Gil watches him fall in love with them day by day. 

It’s understandable with Alex. Alex, now that he is in no real hurry, is softer around the edges, has less urgency to him, he’s more at peace with himself even though he’s still clumsy with how young he really is, clumsy with inexperience and awkward energy. He’s vibrant. He’s smart. Gil understands. 

But Gil - 

He’s distanced himself from John a lot, all of it purposeful. He kisses him and he lets him know how much he likes him, how much he _loves_ him, even, but he doesn’t get as physical about it as Alex does. He’s a million years old. He’s not that interesting. 

Somehow John liking him feels like he’s taking something away from both Alex and John and he has no idea what the logic behind that thought might be and he doesn’t particularly want to know, either.

-

John wants to be turned. It’s terrifying and Gil always knew it would happen, eventually. He wasn’t prepared for how much John wants it, though, how John’s eyes gloss over and his voice gets shrill with despair, how he’ll cry for it, and it makes Alex wild, it makes him confused and Gil doesn’t know how to fix it except by making sure that there won’t be a time when Alex is put into a position where he’ll try to turn John on his own because Alex is only six years old and has no idea what he’s fucking doing most of the time.

Things like this are so easy to fuck up. Gil trusts Alex with his life but he doesn’t trust him with this. 

He doesn’t even trust himself with it - he only turned Alex because he _had_ to, and he doesn’t regret it, how could he, but it could have went so wrong so easily, and he doesn’t know if he can handle living anymore if he tries to turn John and it goes wrong because if it goes wrong it will go severely, irreversibly, lethally wrong, and Gil is scared.

John begs them to turn him, to make him immortal so he can stay with them forever and Gil makes Alex go out to hunt for fresh food. He ignores the panic on John’s face. He ignores John’s fears of being rendered useless. 

It hurts but he does it to protect all three of them.

-

(dark eyes sliding shut and gil has no idea whose eyes they are and if they’re going to open again -

dark braids slick with blood -

alex opens his eyes and he keeps waking up -)

-

They were never meant to leave.

He knows John doesn’t believe him, and it breaks his heart but he understands why. They swore they’d never leave, and then they did. They left him and only came back when he was almost dead. 

“We didn’t mean to,” sobs Alex into John’s skin, almost regularly by the time they’ve been back for a week, “we didn’t mean to. We had to we had no choice - John, we didn’t have a choice.” 

Did they have a choice? Sure they did. Everything is a choice. 

But they never meant to leave and John doesn’t believe him.

-

(alex, weak from blood loss, dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, an arrow in his thigh -

this wasn’t supposed to happen, there wasn’t supposed to be hunters near to their house, this wasn’t supposed to happen -

alex leans on him the whole way to the safehouse, says “john john john we have to get john” but they _can’t_ , the hunters are still there and they’ll see them and alex is still weak, they have to _wait_ and gil can only pray it won’t be too late by the time the hunters choose to move on -

it takes one and half fucking months for them to go, takes one and half months until hercules comes back from walking his dogs and tells them the coast is clear and they go -)

-

They come back and John is almost dead.

They come back and see him and Gil rips open his own wrist and just holds it to John’s open mouth. There’s no time for rituals. John comes back but the wait time kills Alex and Gil hyperventilates as Alex patches his wrist up and pets his hair with stiff hands. They wait and they wait and then two days later John gasps and then he wakes up. 

“John,” says Alex, and he’s crying immediately, hands on John’s face, and Gil’s body freezes, turns into a frozen steel block, and John makes a croaking noise and then he says “now I owe you again, now you have to keep me,” and Alex chokes on a sob because that was _never_ what this was about.

John passes out again. 

Now all they have left to do is wait. Gil wonders if it’s possible to die from guilt and hopes that

-

John as a vampire is like a baby bird. Like a baby vulture. He’s sharp toothed but delicate, buzzes with hunger but not really adjusted enough to this new lifestyle to even keep himself upright most of the time and they take him out to hunt, something Gil didn’t even do with Alex until he had been turned for almost two months and John does about as well as Gil thought he would but he’s smart, he’s learning, and he needs to learn, needs to survive.

They get him steady enough. And he’s smart. Gil watches as John tries to make Alex feed from him, like it’s an instinct, and Alex doesn’t want to, doesn’t want his blood, but he takes it anyway, his sweet, sweet Alex, and John realizes that and takes his wrist away. 

And Gil watches them as they problem solve. He watches as Alex takes his human teeth and presses the blunt pressure of them over John’s wrists and pretends that it’s the same. John looks blissful, looks grateful, looks beautiful and happy and Alex sucks on his skin like he’s trying to make a hickey. And Gil wants to tackle hug them both. Wants to kiss them both silly.

-

Gil catches Alex turning John’s freckles into commas with a black ballpoint pen one day and understands the symbolism there. Then he realizes he’s making them into _semicolons_ and he has to take a moment.

Where the sentence could have ended, but it didn’t. 

Alex turns their lives into commas and clauses and where they could have ended he adds semicolons.

-

(dreams, again - freckles of blood and ice;

eyes like water over rocks where it’s shallow and warm; eyes like coke in a glass, eyes like guinness, eyes like ink;

john, from behind him, pulls him closer into the bracket of his body to hold him close, and alex, in front of him, folds his body to turn himself into another bracket until gil is contained,

consistently happy, finally, for the first time in his life.)

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on tumblr @laflams or twitter @lams4lams


End file.
